Michael O’Leary, Ryanair CEO: Growing up in public

Published by Financial Times 4th October 2015, article by Tanya Powley, Transport Correspondent

Within minutes of entering Michael O’Leary’s office near Dublin airport, I quickly find myself at the receiving end of the jokey banter of Ryanair’s voluble boss after he asks me who I flew with from London. 

When I tell him that I travelled with rival airline British Airways and the flight landed 10 minutes late, Mr O’Leary’s eyes twinkle with amusement. “You went for the high-cost option — and you were delayed,” he laughs. “You’ll be flying on Ryanair soon.”

In his trademark open-necked shirt and jeans, the chief executive of Ryanair is in high spirits. And he has reason to be cheerful. The Irish airline, Europe’s largest budget carrier that he has headed since 1994, is benefiting after its decision almost two years ago to treat its passengers as customers rather than adversaries. After two profit warnings in 2013, when oil prices were twice today’s level, its new strategy helped boost its growth. Last month it increased full-year profit guidance by a quarter, to a range of €1.18bn to €1.21bn.

Gone are the days when he cultivated his deliberately spiky image, which saw him threaten to charge overweight passengers more and tell customers asking for a refund to “f*** off”.

Has Ryanair entered boring middle-age as it marks its 30th birthday this year? “We are probably moving from [being] what I would call errant teenagers into being somewhat more adult in the way we both interact with our customers and communicate with the outside world,” Mr O’Leary says. 

He acknowledges that the cheeky start-up nature of the airline was alienating some of its customers, who preferred to pay a higher fare elsewhere because Ryanair irritated them too much. But in the early days of the airline, the provocative image was a deliberate way to generate lots of free publicity. Mr O’Leary says he became a “cartoon pantomime villain”. 

“I’m Irish so you’re born with bullshit on tap. We can’t help ourselves,” he says. The economic imperative helped, he says, because the airline did not have the money for marketing. “You’ve got to go out and make as much noise as you can yourself. It becomes pretty simple.”

But for those that enjoy the humour that Ryanair brings to the featureless plains of modern corporate life, the Irish carrier’s new grown-up image does not mean the end of silly photo opportunities, during which Mr O’Leary has dressed up as anything from a mobile phone to the Pope. Only weeks before our meeting, he dressed as Batman’s sidekick Robin to promote a new partnership with CarTrawler, a car website. 

He is tied into leading the airline until 2019 after signing a contract last year that replaced a rolling year-on-year arrangement in place since 1997. This year he will receive a basic package of €2.4m, up a third on 2014. According to one Irish newspaper’s estimate he is worth more than €755m, largely thanks to a 3.7 per cent stake in Ryanair.

His 1,000-acre estate is his escape, where he enjoys walking through the fields with his four children — three boys and a girl all under the age of 10 — collecting horse chestnuts on a recent weekend. “I enjoy it as a release or as a change from running Ryanair or flying around Europe. I grew up on a farm. I wanted my kids to do the same.” His children are not very aware of his public image, he says, as he does little media in Ireland beyond corporate interviews and the occasional racehorse item. 

“I’ve always been very careful. If you Google me, apart from horseracing, there’ll be nothing out there personally about me or my family, my wife and kids. We live quietly,” he says.

Before he became an extrovert chief executive he was a tax accountant. The son of a businessman, Mr O’Leary was educated at Ireland’s best schools. He claims he was never interested in aviation as a child and still is not. “People ask me do you fly? Well yes, in the passenger seat. Would you like to learn how to fly? No! What the hell for? It’s incredibly dull.” His entry into the industry was an accident, he says, through working as an accountant for the Ryan family.

“It lost humongous amounts of money for the first two or three years, in the mid-1980s. I recommended very strongly that they shut it down because it would never, ever make any money, which goes to show my lack of basic foresight,” he says.

Mr O’Leary was sent in to staunch the losses, which saw him cut the fleet by about 12, to six aircraft. After visiting Southwest Airlines in the US, the original low-cost airline, Ryanair found its successful model. 

Throughout our conversation, Mr O’Leary often leans back in his chair and waves his hands around to emphasise a point. He is set on plans to grow annual passenger numbers to about 160m in six to eight years, and almost double profits to €2bn. 

He says he respects his competitors, acknowledging that Carolyn McCall, easyJet’s chief executive, has done a “good job” at repositioning the brand away from trying to compete with Ryanair on price. “We’re Lidl and Aldi. You don’t want to get into a price war with us,” he says. 

Mr O’Leary says he will be more vocal in supporting Britain staying in Europe, despite having been critical of European regulation. “The EU gets a lot of unfair criticism in the UK, but it has delivered much for the UK economy. It needs people, companies like us, to actively campaign.” 

Meanwhile, Ryanair will maintain its softer approach, with the occasional bit of mischief. As Mr O’Leary says at the end of our interview: “I haven’t sworn. I’ve been very good. I’m learning. I’m trying to get 

Second opinion

The former rival CEO

Christoph Mueller, chief executive at Malaysia Airlines, spent five years as one of Mr O’Leary’s main rivals, when he was head of Aer Lingus. Ryanair was also one of its main shareholders, after Mr O’Leary attempted to buy its Irish competitor several times. 

“I have been in a lot of competition, all over the world, and in everything from cargo to charter to low-cost,” he says. “Michael was by far the best fun to compete against. Very tough, very Irish but always a gentleman.”